The Department of Psychiatry of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center is seeking the Clinical Mental Health Academic Award for Vivian Kafantaris, M.D., so she can receive additional training and supervised experience in the conduct of clinical trials in adolescents, a relatively neglected area in child and adolescent psychiatry. Dr. Kafantaris is board-certified in general psychiatry and in child and adolescent psychiatry. She completed a 3 year National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) supported Institutional National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowship in Child Psychopharmacology Research Training, under the direction of Dr. Magda Campbell at New York University. She is currently the Assistant Physician-In-Charge of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Ambulatory Services at Schneider Children's Hospital of Long Island Jewish Medical Center. In this position, approximately 60% of her time is allotted to direct clinical care, administrative work and teaching and 40% to research activities.Her goal, to become a clinical researcher in the area of severe psychiatric illness in children and adolescents, would be greatly facilitated by this award as it will give her the opportunity to pursue further training and supervised experience on a full-time, rather than part-time basis.The long Island Jewish Medical Center- Hillside Hospital offers an environment of rigorous and pioneering work in clinical psychopharmacology and is the site of an NIMH- funded Mental Health Clinical Research Center directed by Dr. John Kane and a research fellowship in Psychopharmacology and the Neurosciences directed by Dr. Jeffery Lieberman. During the award period, she will be supervised by Drs. Kane, Lieberman and Howard Abikoff, and will consult with Dr. Rachel Klein and other available experts. She will also take courses and individualized tutorials in the neurosciences, neuropharmacology, research design, methodology and statistics.Her research plans include conducting the first double-blind placebo-controlled trial of lithium in bipolar adolescents. Dr. Kafantaris will also teach psychopathology and psychopharmacology in children and adolescents, act as a mentor to trainees on research projects, involve the clinical staff in research projects and disseminate information on opportunities for research training and experience to staff and trainees.